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Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Politics is the art of telling people what they want to hear and then doing what’s expedient, according to the dictates of power and money. It’s basically the art of the deal. Deals are accomplished through compromise. It’s quid pro quo. It’s been said that ‘the devil is in the details’ and that is what deals contain, details. Details require lawyers. The job of a lawyer is to find the loopholes and exceptions to the law, so that the law can be bent to accommodate the needs of the deal. Eventually, the law no longer operates according to its tenets and the only place it applies is to the living conditions of those too poor to afford lawyers, at the whim of those who can.

Corruption is the fruit of politics and eventually the system dies, strangled by the entangling knots of self-interest, at the expense of the public interest. Sooner or later all of the wealth and power winds up in the hands of those most lacking in conscience and restraint. Eventually warfare becomes the driving force of the economy and eventually a police state emerges to stifle protest at the perversion of justice and whatever virtues the original system founded its operations upon. You can tell the state of a nation by the nature and size of its prison system. Much more can be said but no more needs to be.

One can think of spiritual progress and the characteristics of the path in terms of a mountain. At the base of the mountain and for some distance upward, the mountain is ringed by temporal and religious institutions. Depending on the size of them, there are some numbers of entrance doors into the institutions. Once inside you have entered a labyrinth of circuitous bends and switchbacks, which lead into cul de sacs and walls composed of letters and numbers that block your access beyond. All of these institutions are comprised of dogma and ritual. There are uniforms to be worn and uniforms of behavior that reflect the possibility of harmony within the construct. One can spend many lifetimes within these constructs and experience advantageous and disadvantageous births as a result of previous behaviors. Each life acquires to itself a varying weight of desires and appetites that fuel the onward progress of the participant.

There are two kinds of people, composing the large majority of all populations, in these institutions; those who feel trapped and those who are pleased to be there. Fortunes shift according to mysterious laws that are not the same as the laws of operation for the institutions. Set destinies result from any path taken in the mix. You go up and down, experience favor and disgrace. Time has a specific weight and conditions and circumstances are dictated by the particular movement of large forces in concert with each other. You could say that this is the movement of the stars and you wouldn’t be wrong.

Depending on the conditions of the times, escaping from the influence of these institutions can seem difficult to near impossible. Every period of time has its atmosphere that colors the meaning of what motivates and surrounds you. This is the dream power of Maya, the active, deceptive principle of the divine. It is the quality and power of what composes your physical, emotional and mental landscape. It’s what generates the tests and trials of your existence. Conventional wisdom says that the better you are at adapting to this, the better off you are. That’s not so, unless all you expect of life is to be found in the particular conditions and transitions of a temporary existence. The end result of such an existence is a trip to the moon for a new set of clothes for a new role, over and over.

One of the readers here, lately, has been at pains to assure me that reincarnation doesn’t exist. He says he has no proof of this, can’t prove it but then he says that regardless and despite his disclaimer not to know, it doesn’t exist. As I have personal proof of reincarnation beyond any doubt, I would not be in agreement with him. In any case, it doesn’t matter what he or I think. What matters is what is true. I often give the example of Galileo and the church. The church said that The Sun revolved around the Earth. Galileo said the opposite. It turned out that the Earth does indeed revolve around The Sun after all. This is my only concern that what is so is so and that I might be able to perceive what that is. I don’t argue with people, regardless of how convincing I might think myself capable. I simply state things and people can take or leave them. If they want to argue they have to look for someone disposed to argument and they won’t have to look too far for that.

There are other obstacles to one’s progress up the mountain of the spirit, besides the institutions previously mentioned and those are the appetites and desires of each and every one of us, along with whatever mindset we carry around with us in response to the appearances of Maya, as it operates according to whatever lessons are being handed out. This is why the most powerful mantra a person can possess is, “I don’t know”. If this is repeated with intensity and consistency, until it becomes visceral, one encounters the one who does know and one is then led out of the institutions and has their appetites and desires explained to them and translated into a single desire, which is the desire for liberation.

There are mechanisms to effect liberation and the key attributes required by these mechanisms are consistency and intensity. According to the degree of these, upon that rests the speed of transformation. One of the mechanisms is ‘japa’. You can look that up and you can translate its meaning into whatever tradition you are working your way out of. Another mechanism is the adoption of Bhakti to all of your thoughts and actions. In Kali Yuga that is the only method certain of success. You can ingest psychedelic substances, which have the result of blasting you out of the infrastructure and into a perception of the world beyond. It’s a temporary state and it’s useful, though not absolutely necessary, in the darker times, of which this one qualifies as such. There is a mystical fourth condition that could be called ‘grace’. This is when, for whatever the reason, you have come to the attention of a luminous being, who has attained to the top of the mountain and has chosen to be your guide and take you under their wing. This can and should be sought no matter what you are practicing.

At any point around the base of this mountain, there are paths inward and upward. Once you have effectively reached the top of the mountain you can see all of the ways down, or up, as you prefer. Nothing going on at the base of the mountain is of any importance and the whole purpose of anything there is to trap you in its revolving conditions, which go on and on and on, ad infinitum. People can argue till the application of doomsday’s break but they will do nothing but add to their stock of false and imprisoning knowledge. The mass of the world will argue against your efforts to be free. You will be laughed at, reviled and told that you are crazy and, according to their standards, you are and more power to you.

I have personally seen the truth of what I am stating today and have lived what I am describing. Whether that is true and whether it is believed by anyone is unimportant, except to the degree that I happen to be correct and in that case it might be useful in affirming things felt within the hearts and minds of those reading. These things are true or they are not and that is the final testament of anything.

Everything that is sought in the states of being at the base of the mountain is automatically granted to those who have succeeded in freeing themselves. Conversely, these things are never more than partially accomplished otherwise and always attended by pain and disappointment. Pain and disappointment are the educators for those inclined to learn. For those who are not inclined to learn, they simply continue until they are. Nothing is what it seems to be and every life proves that one way or another. Anyone who has taken the conditions of life as their primary course of study learns this. One can learn a great deal from studying the old and the young and observing what happens on the wheel of fire.

Nothing that is said here will mean anything to those not inclined to consider it. The phenomenal world is a world of darkness surrounded by invisible light and lit with a deceptive and false light. Make of it what you will. We all do.